


ladder to the stars

by pheonix85



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapped Peter Parker, Kidnapped Tony Stark, Peter Parker Whump, Torture, uh and a lot of adult language tony is not pleased
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28228479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pheonix85/pseuds/pheonix85
Summary: Tony Stark wakes up in a cell after an Assemble call gone wrong. His captors want him to build them a weapon but Tony isn't in the business of doing that anymore, especially in moments of imprisonment and coercion.Sucks for the poor hooded guy they're torturing as they try and persuade him, though.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 7
Kudos: 191
Collections: Irondad Fic Exchange 2020





	ladder to the stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dontmockmyawkwardness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dontmockmyawkwardness/gifts).



> dontmockmyawkwardness, i'm so sorry for the delay but I wish you a very happy holidays! I hope this is in line with the whump you requested and that you enjoy it! It's my first attempt at this type of thing, so hopefully it fits alright :)

God, Tony’s head hurts.

He hasn’t drank in years but in his muddled state he thinks may he fell off the wagon. Tony blinks against dim lighting, a musty smell of stale water and cold surroundings filling his nose. He groans as he pushes up off whatever he’s laying on, wincing at the light, pressing the palm of his hand to his head, and it’s then that he hears the clank of iron against the bed frame. 

Tony blinks quickly, rolling his shoulders, shaking his head, blearily taking in his surroundings and, as quickly as his foggy mind is able to, realizes he hasn’t been drinking after all.

He’s in what looks to be a large, bare cement room. Tony is seated on a full sized, thin mattress on a metal bed frame, clad only in his undershirt and the black pants he wears under his suit. He’s trying to remember what came before but right now his mind is too cloudy to think of that. So, he takes fully stock of _what is now_ and decides to figure out the rest later.

There’s a stainless steel workbench on the opposite side of the room. It looks bolted to the wall, a sconce with a fluorescent light posted above it. There’s not much there right now, but he’s starting to assume that will probably change. 

Next to the bed, there’s a small wooden table with a plastic glass filled with water and he’s suddenly struck with thirst, He lunges for it, spilling half of it down his chest, gasping once it’s gone. After a few moments, his mind clears a bit more and he starts to examine the rest of hsi space, and sees a few small cameras, mounted in the corners.

Tony looks down at his hand, bound by a chain attached to a hook in the ground 20 or so feet away. His opposite side ankle has a similar binding and he realizes all he can really do is wait, until someone comes and explains their nefarious plan in mindnumbing detail, as to why he’s here and what they want from him. Afghanistan lurks in the distance of his memory, and Tony shakes his head with a groan, rubbing at his neck as he stretches his back and twists with a wince

“Everything old is new again, I guess.”

* * *

It’s not a surprise when someone shows up shortly after. Tony doesn’t have a watch or any way to tell how long it’s been, and he supposes he should try and keep time some other way. When his captor appears, it’s in the form of a woman dressed in dark pants and a zip up hoodie, black hair pulled tight behind her head. The grin she gives him when she steps in is feral, a cat playing with it’s food. The door shuts behind her and she tilts her head in it’s direction.

“You have a guard out there at all times. So let’s not try anything stupid.”

Tony resists the urge to frown. He can’t pick up an accent, so he can’t pinpoint exactly where the woman is from, who she may be working for. In her hand, she holds a packaging tube, like you’d have for a poster, but Tony figures it’s not something to decorate his new residence. 

“We would like you to build something for us.”

Tony doesn’t react. The door to his room opens and a man wheels in a stand with what looks like a television from the 90s bolted to the top of it. Tony watches, still and quiet as the man hooks it up to an outlet he hasn’t noticed yet. The woman is watching him the whole time. She walks to the workbench, leaving the packaging tube.

“Uncharacteristically quiet. You surprise me, Mr. Stark.”

It’s a challenge, to be sure. Tony wants to snipe at her, snark about her get up or the cliche of the plans in her hand or the fact that he feels like he’s in a college seminar all over again with the media they’ve rolled in. But he doesn’t. He knows, by now, that the side comments hurt more than they help---at least until he has all of the information.

When the television is connected, the woman turns it on. The connection is grainy, black and white; closed circuit, if he had to guess, so somewhere in the building. There’s nothing there though; it’s an empty room, similar to where he’s at.

The man---assumedly his guard---leaves but returns shortly with another plastic cup of water and a plate of what looks to be dry toast and some less than stellar looking grapes, but he supposes it’s better than nothing. Tony tries to take quick stock of the man: nothing of note to his outfit, but carries a gun on one hip, and on the other, only what looks to be a lanyard with a few plastic badges on the other.

Tony picks at the food as they leave.

He waits for a few minutes. He knows they’re watching him, seeing how reacts and so he steadies himself. They haven’t left him with much, so he expects they will wait for what he requests to build….whatever it is that is outlined on the paper in that tube. He eyes the workbench again; not much to work with as of yet, but in his mind he starts to tally a list. 

The television has to be closed circuit; there’s no way they would be stupid enough to put him near anything with connection to the outside world, and considering it’s at least 30 year old technology, it only solidifies it for him. Tony nibbles on the toast, switching gears to what could have possibly lead to him being here.

He remembers the call to assemble. Sure, half the team is god knows where in the world, but he has Rhodey and Vision, and so they hopped on a Quinjet and rolled out north, to the frozen tundra of BFE Canada because there were some hairy signals coming from a long believed deserted base of the governments. And that’s where it gets fuzzy.

Tony remembers...smoke. Alarms blaring, lights, he remembers it being cold, remembers the pain...he wasn’t in the armor. They had crashed.

Which meant Rhodey or Vision could be here too. Less likely Vision, he supposed; but where were they then, letting him wallow here? How long had he been asleep?

Tony sits the plate aside and pushes himself to his feet, shuffling to the work table finally. He unfurls the plans from the tube, spreading them out and reviewing them, and recognizes them immediately---it had been the project they’d been speccing out, for after the Jericho missiles. The project that had been abandoned in mid-flight when he’d come home and disbanded the weapons arm of Stark Industries.

A project that Tony had taken and amended, and built into his suit.

Precision missiles, better than anyone was making at the time, still better than anyone else was making 10 years later. Large as a station wagon or as small and narrow as a pencil, which Tony had used to fashion into his gauntlets. And it looked like these yahoos really thought he was gonna build this out for them now. He fights the urge to scoff. Amateurs.

He pushes the plans away and shuffles back to the bed, crossing his arms behind his head and laying back. His eyes shift to the camera in the corner and he gives a shake of his head before closing his eyes to nap. He misses, then, as a chair is placed in the room on the screen of the television, and a figure in chains is shuffled toward it, their head shrouded in some kind of hood.

They wait.

* * *

The woman with the black hair is standing over him when Tony wakes up from his nap. He blinks blearily at her, a little concerned with the smirk on her face. She steps aside, and his line of sight falls on the screen that now contains a person in it’s scope, though their face is hidden. He waits for a moment, glancing at her, then back to the screen.

“We were hoping you might reconsider our request.”

_Unlikely_ , Tony thinks to himself, but pushes himself up on elbows. He thinks it might be Rhodey; it must be Rhodey, he doesn’t know who else it could be, but he knows Rhodey enough to know that the man wouldn’t want him to give in to their demands. When it’s clear Tony is not going to respond, the woman cranes her neck around towards the camera in the corner and nods.

Another guard appears on screen, dressed much like the man stationed outside Tony’s door. Whoever is in that chair, their limbs are weak and floppy, like they’ve been drugged. The guard grabs at the figure’s hand---

The figure’s white hand. Tony holds in a sigh of relief. Not Rhodey, then.

The relief is short lived. The guard grabs a finger and pulls it back, snapping it in two, eliciting a pained moan from whoever the person is. Tony freezes, a swallow stuck in his throat, but he doesn’t...making these weapons for these people, they could kill so many more. He can’t...it’s difficult to watch, of course, Tony knows torture, knows what it’s like. When he doesn’t say anything, the woman nods to the camera again.

Another finger, this time on the other hand, is broken. Another pained sound elicited.

“Stop it.” Tony snaps. “I’ll….” He takes a breath. “Look, lay off the guy, and i’ll...i’ll take a second look.”

Her mouth curls into a smile. “Thank you, Mr. Stark, for being so considerate. I’ll check on you again soon. Please let us know how we can help.”

Tony glares at her, silent as she leaves and the door falls shut behind her.

* * *

Tony comes up with a list of things he needs to build the damn thing. He tells them he’s eventually going to need access to a lab, which they agree to. He tells them the chains have to come off, too, that he needs to be able to use the whole room and not be restricted, and they oblige, though with a warning that they are _always_ watching. He gets a laptop and some hardware---circuits, a coil, a capacitor, a circuit board, some tools, and he gets started.

Whenever he lags, they break another bone of the guy on the screen. Tony winces in sympathy, but he needs to buy himself time. Whoever the guy is, he hopes they will understand if he ever gets the chance to explain. 

HIs guard comes in three times a day to bring him food and water. The laptop is standalone, but there’s a clock and a date, so he knows how long he’s been here. Over a week, which means someone has noticed he’s gone at this point. Someone is sure to be looking for him, and so he thinks if he can wait this out...then maybe he can keep this from coming to a head.

His hopes are short lived. By the end of the week, he has little more to show for his elaborately feigned efforts than a gobble gook of code that won’t really do anything more than to automate a door when the woman reappears. He figures that is probably not a great sign.

“We’re getting impatient, Mr. Stark. We expected some kind of result at this point.”

She steps aside again, and his attention is pulled to the figure on the screen. The guard is there again, standing beside the figure on the chair, still hooded and chained. The guy has been taking beatings every day. They slap him around, they’ve broken almost all of his fingers at this point, smashed his feet. Tony has tried to slow them down, but the guy is an absolute mess at this point and Tony hopes he can make it up to him someday, if he ever finds out who he is.

The guard pulls out a gun and Tony’s heart jumps. “Wait---”

The guard points the gun low at the man’s knee and pulls the trigger and the man screams, the man keeps screaming, this primal, animalistic howling that makes Tony’s skin crawl. Tony is yelling, _wait, wait, wait_ and then, the worst of all, the guard pulls the hood off the man’s face.

It’s a mess of blood and sweat and tears and snot but Tony...he knows the face as soon as he sees it and he’s about to get sick. A sound leaves his mouth that he knows gives the woman some kind of sick pleasure, because her mouth twists in a grin as she watches him closely.

It’s Peter. 

Oh god, it’s Peter.

* * *

He’s going to kill them all.

Tony picks up the pace on what he was plotting to do all along, but had been slow rolling all this time, trying to give whoever might be looking for him enough time to find him but that time is up now. He types out hundreds of lines of code, knowing exactly what he’s trying to do. When he’s done, he saves it to a blank jump drive they’ve given him and passes it off to the guard when the man comes into the room when Tony knocks on the door. 

Then he waits for night to come.

Tony waits for what he expects is about 2 am. He slides out of his bed in the dark, moving slowly towards the door. The camera’s are shit, the tech is old so even in the dim light of the lamp over the workbench won’t highlight his movement too much. When he sits up, he pulls the circuit board from under his shirt and waves it by the door, which pops open easily.

Fucking morons, giving him whatever he asked for.

The guard is unaware, half asleep himself, a magazine in his lap. Tony strikes him in the face and when the man bends over with a groan, brings his knee up to finish the job. He takes the man’s gun and the rest of the badges Tony didn’t get a chance to clone and heads up a hallway. 

This is the tricky part. Tony has no idea where he’s going, no idea where they’re holding Peter, He stays close to the walls, tracking as quietly as possible, keeping an eye out for other guards. They’ll surely discover the one he knocked out quickly and once that happens, hell really will break loose.

Luckily, though, they’d done some kind of reconnaissance of this place before they headed out. Tony knows that, blessedly, it wasn’t very big. As he walks, he realizes they’ve been keeping him in the basement and once he finds the stairwell, he heads up. It’s a three tiered building so he takes his time, carefully scouring the rooms he comes across and within an hour, he finds a cell similar to his own, bars over a slat about head height, and through it he sees a figure laid out on threadbare bed, his wrist chained to the post.

Tony swears, again; he's going to kill them all.

One of the badges he's stolen from the guard works. The door opens and he hurries inside, pulling at a chain from a light bulb in the center of the room. Tony kneels beside the bed. Peter is out cold.

"C'mon kid, c'mon…." Tony whispers, placing a gentle hand on the sleeping boy's shoulder. "I can't carry you alone, I need you up."

Peter’s clearly been drugged. At least, Tony’s hoping this is drugs; if they beaten Peter so badly he’s unwakeable, Tony truly does worry about what he’ll do to these people. 

It takes some more coaxing but eventually, the kid’s eyes flutter open and he groans, wincing against the dim lighting. Tony talks to him softly, and eventually Peter’s gaze blearily finds the man and the boy sucks in a breath of air, trying to move more. Tony steadies him. 

“Missr…” Peter’s head lolls, his words slurred.”Msr Sark, I didn’t..I didn’t….”

“Shh, shh kid, it’s alright, you’re okay. You’re okay, I’ve got you.”

Tony surveys the bed a little more, now that Peter is responsive. The kid is still chained to the bed, and Tony assumes whatever he has in his system, it’s going to affect whatever ability Peter may have had to break it. He bites his lip. He has a handful of badges that aren’t do shit. And he has a gun.

“Peter, close your eyes. Turn your head away.”

Peter does as he’s told, though Tony doesn’t elaborate further. He steps back and points he gun at the chain, and he fires. There’s a loud crack, a startled yelp from Peter, but the chain breaks and the boy’s arm slumps to the floor with the weight of the cuff that remains. 

“That’ll do. Now, come on, they’re probably on their way.” Tony kneels again, trying to gather Peter, but the boy is disoriented and uncoordinated, and when Tony tries to sit him up, the boy moves like a wet noodle, limbs useless. Tony swears.

“C’mon, Peter, I cannot do this alone, I need you to get your feet. I can help you but we’re gonna be screwed…”

“C’n. I c’n…” Peter pushes himself up, breathing heavy and shaky, clearly in pain. He manages to sit up and stay there for a few moments, before he’s pushing himself up off the bed and onto his legs with another, pained noise. Tony loops his free arm up and under Peter’s left side, supporting the boy as best he can.

Peter’s right knee is a mess. It’s doing nothing to help, but his left leg is still alright; thank goodness for the boy's accelerated healing, it seems like the toes they crushed are already doing alright. Tony mutters gentle words of encouragement as he slides the boy along gingerly around the room once or twice to get the hang of it, to know if he can actually take Peter with him, and then he states he believes they’re good and ready to go. 

Peter looks up at him then, eyes barely open. He takes a few more shaky breaths, and swallows before speaking, still a little out of it. “We…we goin’ home now, Mssr Stark?” 

“Yeah Pete,” Tony says gently, barely keeping himself from losing it. “I’m taking you home.”

* * *

They end up in what has to be whatever their command room is, though it’s not much. Outdated, clearly unused for years until these people decided to do whatever the fuck they’ve cooked up---Tony still doesn’t know who they’re working for. He’s holding the gun up at the woman who’s been leading all of this, and there are two guards on the ground that he’s already shot at, and a man behind a computer staring at him with wide eyes, clearly terrified.

“Don’t you know how stupid fucking easy it is to clone those badges?” Tony’s point the gun at her with his free hand, his other arm holding Peter up. “The smartest thing you did was keeping him a secret for so long. This would have been over much sooner if you hadn’t.”

An alarm blares. The woman looks up towards the man behind the desktop. “What is it now?”

“Perimeter breach, ma’am. It looks like---”

Tony cuts him off, lowering his arm with the gun just a little. “I assume you plugged that usb drive in to review it yourself. Stupid again.” He discharges the gun, shooting the woman with the black hair in the knee, dropping her to the ground. “That would be the cavalry.” 

* * *

When Peter wakes up, he’s in a hospital room.

He’s warm, which is a nice change of pace from the last couple of days, and there’s a soft fog settled over his mind, the absence of the unending ache from his body of the past week a welcome feeling. 

Peter blinks and lets his head loll a little to the side, and he sees Mr. Stark curled up in a seat by the bed, himself asleep as well. After a few quiet moments, as if sensing Peter’s gaze, his eyes flutter open. When he realizes Peter is staring, he begins to move.

“ _Pete_ ,” He reaches for the boy, the sleep falling away quickly. “You’re awake, thank god. How are you feeling kid?”

“Mmm…” Peter hums, trying to reach for something solid in his mind. His tongue feels thick and heavy. “Water.”

Tony moves quickly, rising to his feet and moving to grab a pitcher near what Peter assumes is the door to the bathroom. Tony hurries back and presses the button next to the bed, and the head of it tilts forward until Peter is sitting up. Tony holds the glass to his face, helping him drink. He manages to get most of it in his mouth and keep in there, and Tony wipes up what spills. Peter relax’s back against the pillow, breathing heavy. 

"You remember what happened, kiddo?"

Peter nods a little. He remembers...he remembers being at school, and then not being at school. He remembers them giving him something, a shot to the neck. He remember waking up in that room, he remembers the chair they bound him to, his limbs limp, unable to stablize himself long enough to fight back. He remembers....

"My knee...." Peter whimpers then, trying to lift his arm. Tony grabs it in midair, giving him a gentle squeeze.

"Cho's already had her way with you. It was a bit of a mess, but we threw you in the cradle for a bit. It'll be good as new in a couple of day." Tony is watching him intently, brown eyes wide and worried. "You've been asleep for a few days."

_A few days._ On top of however long he was wherever he was, Peter starts to panic a little. "Aunt May----!"

"Is right down the hall. It's like 4 in the morning, so I think she's hopefully sleeping, but I can go get her if you want."

Peter relaxes back again, against the pillow. He shakes his head, he'll see her when she wakes up. He's sure she's been worried. He looks back up at Mr. Stark. "Why?"

Tony grimaces. "My fault, it seems. Some spin off faction of some ex-Hyrda folks wanted me to make something and I didn't want to build it for them. I didn't know it was you at first, Peter. I'm so sorry."

Peter remembers the hood, then. He remembers having to wear it all day, as the men smashed his feet and broke his fingers and hit him in the face. His hands start to tremble at the memory. 

"They gave you something to weaken your powers, but luckily your healing wasn't as badly affected," Tony continues, grabbing onto one of Peter's hands, wrapped in bandages. Tony's thumb glides over the back of it in an effort to calm Peter down. "The cradle helped a lot too, but we want to keep an eye on you for a few days."

Peter nods again. He squints. "You...you saved me though. You got me out."

Tony nods. "When I saw it was you I..." Tony sighs, bowing his head. "I took care of them, Peter. I promise, they won't hurt you again."

Peter smiles a little then, head falling back against his pillow. "I know, Mr. Stark. You always take care of it." He sighs as his eyes close. "Mr. Stark, I'm still so tired."

Tony is still watching him, he can sense it. He feels the man pull the covers a little higher over his lap, and Peter feels the bed begin to lower. "You've been through a lot, Pete. Rest as much as you need. I'll be here the whole time."

Peter knows he's telling the truth. That Tony will sit there the whole time, until Aunt May comes to take his place. Peter thinks it might be nice to sleep until then and drifts off slowly, safe and content, not worried at all. 


End file.
